Anisa Khalifa

You’re taking a Walk on the Broadside. Welcome! I’m Anisa Khalifa.

This tour is brought to you by The Broadside, a podcast about our home in North Carolina at the crossroads of the South. It’s a project from WUNC, Durham’s public radio station.

You’re at a secret extra stop on top of our 5 stops around downtown. Check all of them out on the map right below this audio player on your phone.

This story is about the Durham Bull, the animal that's been a symbol of this city for almost 150 years.

The ten-foot-tall bull towering over you right now is a local icon.

Anisa Khalifa

You taking pictures of the bull?

Kashif

So I don't know honestly the significance of it… it's called Bull City I guess?

Anisa Khalifa

This 2500 pound bronze statue is only one of the MANY bulls we see around town. But this one is special, made by local artists Michael and Leah Waller over many months.

Emma Parker

And his name is Major. He's named after a Durham City councilor named George Watts Hill, who went by Major.

Anisa Khalifa

This is Emma Parker, a librarian at the Durham County Main Library, just down the street from here.

Emma Parker

Every time I go downtown, I see little kids posing in front of him, adults posing in front of him.

Anisa Khalifa

Major the Bull was installed by the city in 2004. But the story of how Durham became the Bull City goes back more than a century…and it starts with two things that left an indelible imprint on this area: tobacco and the Civil War.

Emma Parker

So in the 1860s a guy named John Ruffin Green had a tobacco factory in what was then called Durham Station. So it wasn't even Durham yet.

Anisa Khalifa

It was a small company - Green's customers were mostly UNC students. But then in 1865, the last major surrender of the Civil War happened right here in town, at Bennet Place. Which meant a ton of Union and Confederate soldiers hanging out in Durham.

Emma Parker

They, after the surrender, kind of hung out together a little bit like maybe partied, um, and stayed in Durham. And as part of that they plundered John Ruffin Green's factory and took all of his tobacco. And he thought, I'm ruined. My business is never gonna recover.

Anisa Khalifa

But there was something different about this tobacco - it was Brightleaf, cured with a special process. And once those Union soldiers had a taste of it, they wanted more.

Emma Parker

You know that tobacco is really good that we stole in Durham, and they started writing these letters and being like, we want Durham tobacco.

Anisa Khalifa

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. But then others in the area caught on to this trend and started to sell what they called "Durham tobacco". So Green decided to get this newfangled thing called… a trademark. And legend goes that the inspiration for that trademark came from a very random place.

Emma Parker

Went for a morning meal of fried oysters with a friend named John Witted to Hillsborough. And while they were there, they saw a jar of Coleman's mustard, um, which has a bull on the logo, and it said Durham mustard. So the, his friend John Witted said, well, your tobacco's from Durham and Coleman's mustard is from Durham, England. So maybe you should call it Bull Durham Tobacco.

Anisa Khalifa

So Durham, North Carolina got its iconic bull from English Mustard!

And there's another connection between Durham and bulls: the Durham Shorthorn, also named for the English city, but widespread in the US back then.

Emma Parker

And it was a really expensive, well regarded type of bull. So I think that the symbol of like strength and reliability and sort of, um, social cachet already was attached to Durham Bulls.

Anisa Khalifa

Disappointingly, there's no proof that the mustard story is real. Emma finds the Durham Shorthorn connection more convincing. But regardless of where Bull Durham tobacco got its mascot, the image of the bull went 19th century viral.

Emma Parker

And then it really stuck around mostly because Bull Durham Tobacco went gangbusters. I mean it was everywhere. Mark Twain quipped that he went to the pyramids of Egypt and the most memorable thing about it was seeing the Bull Durham ad.  As far as we can tell, there was never an ad painted on the pyramids of Egypt, but it just shows their reach.

Anisa Khalifa

As for the phrase "Bull City", it first showed up in the 1880s, in the Winston-Salem newspaper. And a few years later, people here in town embraced it as a fitting moniker for a city with a reputation for grit and pluck.

Emma Parker

By 1902, there were businesses in Durham, um, Bull City Tailors and Bull City Cleaners popped up in the early 1900s and they were both Black-owned businesses.  And I looked in the 2024 phone book, uh, and there were 72 businesses that started with Bull City. Everything from like acupuncture to a veterinary hospital.

Anisa Khalifa

Emma says that in this town, where we see the lingering effects of the tobacco industry all around us, the Bull might be the one good thing it left behind.

Emma Parker

I think it's a city that's always changing and has been through a lot, um, some of which has been very, very challenging for its citizens. But I think, yeah, I guess a bull, you never know really what it's gonna do and where it's gonna go. So I think it's a really fitting symbol.

Anisa Khalifa

That story was made by me, Anisa Khalifa, the host of The Broadside, a podcast from WUNC about the culture, history and interesting quirks of North Carolina. You can listen to our weekly episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts.

This project is made possible thanks to the support of Discover Durham.

You can learn more at wunc.org/walking.